


Drawbacks

by StarlightXNightmare



Series: Drawbacks [1]
Category: Bendy and the Ink Machine
Genre: "good" ending, bendy and the ink machine - Freeform, everyone's been saved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-27
Updated: 2018-02-27
Packaged: 2019-03-24 14:13:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13812876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarlightXNightmare/pseuds/StarlightXNightmare
Summary: Henry may have saved everyone from the inky claws of the studio, but there have been massive drawbacks (no pun intended) to their freedom. The people that he saved aren't the same as they were before and some act like completely different people. The studio has messed with everyone's heads, even Joey Drew, and no one's happy. But even when things seem grim and hopeless, there's always a light to guide them back out of the dark, no matter how murky and endless the times appear.





	Drawbacks

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fanfic of the "good ending" where everyone is saved from the studio and is restored back to their human bodies, but not without a price. The damage done to their minds is permanent and is going to be hard to get over. A few characters tagged may not be mentioned in this particular story, but they do exist in the series and in the work. Shippings may occur over time with this group, but first and foremost thing is the pain everyone is in. I do intend for this to be a series that I update whenever I want to write an angsty or fluffy BatIM fanfic.

It's been about a full month since Henry had miraculously managed to save the former employees of Joey Drew's Studio from the claws of the ink and things couldn't possibly be going any worse then they were now. Sure, Henry hadn't believed they'd all get better within a week and he could turn them loose in the new world they lived in, but nothing has changed other than the bleak hope they all carried that perhaps everything would turn all right in the end and their joy of being up in the sunlight and in the outside world again.

Henry couldn't possibly comprehend the pain they were feeling. He may have been trapped in the studio for a little over a month living on nothing but can after can of expired bacon soup and becoming severely malnourished, having lost about thirty or more pounds and having his bones pressing painfully against his skin. He may have spent his whole time there on edge and paranoid, either restlessly sleeping with one eye open or knocked out due to some form of injury or fatigue. He may have gotten fatally injured more than once, not even counting the several times he had nearly drowned in ink. He had been chased around by nearly every inky abomination in the entire studio at one point, excluding Boris, forcing him to fight his way through the living hell with an axe that had been a little too heavy for him to wield at first then changing weapons from the axe to a gent pipe, a wrench, a plunger, and a hypodermic needle. If his situation had been a living hell, he couldn't even imagine what their situation was like.

But these people who he had worked side by side with every day for years, his friends, had been trapped there for three decades, unable to escape the nightmare they were living because they had been turned into the monsters in their nightmare. They had been forced into the bodies of monsters and their minds had deteriorated in their inky prison, leaving nothing but mere husks of who they used to be. Their human consciousness lurking below the surface of the ink, struggling to claw its way back up into the light only to give up halfway when their struggling got them nowhere. They had been turned into feral creatures that attacked anything that moved, the only hope of remembering what had happened to them and recalling their loved ones based heavily on getting injured or having something familiar or even completely random triggering a memory. Memories just beyond their grasp teased them mercilessly as they fought to reclaim them only to have everything slip like sand between their fingers once they had their grip on it for mere moments, and sometimes even a full day or two. They had the rest of their lives ahead of them, families waiting for them, bright futures dazzling like gleaming gems stolen away from them by a cruel whim of fate. Everything they held close and dear was ripped violently away from them.

Everything about the people he knew so much about was different. Everyone was sporting new scars, both mental and physical. Everyone was impossibly grateful and disbelieving of their second chance. They all had large pieces of their memories missing from the years upon years they had spent down there, whether they were being suppressed or that they weren't conscious for most of it. Everyone had new nervous tics and everyone was afraid of things they weren't previously. Sometimes, he almost forgets that thirty years had whirled by without them and that they were struggling to catch up with the rapidly changing times.

Most were quite eager to leave the prison that had kept them trapped for so long, however there were a few that were reluctant to leave the only place they had taken shelter in all those dark years. Sammy had to sit down at the entrance and take in the sight of the outside world before he could even begin to think about taking a foot outside while Wally had outright refused to leave the studio, too scared to even go near the door. Everyone had outright cried at the sight of the sun and the sky. Susie and Allison had both collapsed in the grass and just lied there immobile, letting the blades of grass tickle their skin while most had just sat down and cried. They cried even harder when Henry had said they all were going to stay with him for as long as it took them to get back on their feet.

Getting everyone into his van had proven tricky. Everyone voted Joey sit up front since no one wanted to sit next to him and Susie, Allison, and Sammy were sandwiched in the backseat with everyone else in the back of the van. Thankfully, everyone had pretty much passed out after the first thirty minutes of driving, seemingly having overstimulated their brains and bodies from all the foreign objects and feelings, leaving Henry to drive five or so hours in peace. Another thing to be grateful for was the fact that everyone was tired enough that they passed out without giving their brains the chance to concoct some sick nightmare to torture themselves with.

Upon arriving at Henry's house in the middle of the country, waking everyone up had proven to be the challenge however. Startling everyone awake with loud noises was automatically a terrible idea, as was shaking everyone awake since a few of them had developed haphephobia. Luckily, a few had been woken by the car coming to a stop, so they had volunteered to carry the still sleeping ones in.

Sleeping arrangements had been decided quickly based upon whom everyone trusted most. Susie and Allison had claimed the bunk bed. No one liked Joey enough to share a room with him so he slept on the couch alone. Thomas, Grant, and Shawn had gone to sleep in the master bedroom. Ironically, seeing as Sammy always had been annoyed by Wally's existence before all this happened, Wally and Sammy had grown close in the weeks they had spent together traveling with Henry, so they had slept in Henry's room with Sammy sharing the bed with Henry while Wally insisted on sleeping on the floor. Norman had pretty much collapsed in an old recliner chair Henry rarely used anymore in the same room as Susie and Allison.

Luckily, Henry had been able to make quite the living as an author, meaning he didn't have to leave the house except for when he had to make many more grocery runs than normal, bringing back much more food than he used to. He was kind of afraid to leave all of them alone honestly: he was afraid they'd all get angry at Joey for something and kill him in a fit of rage. 

The following weeks were... difficult. Everyone had nightmares nearly every night, and if someone miraculously didn't have a nightmare, they would be woken up by someone who did. Everyone would get up and sit around the kitchen table, talking or sitting in silence until the one with the nightmare was calm enough to fall back asleep, and once they were gone, everyone else typically followed in suit. The PTSD everyone gained was painful and nearly impossible to avoid. For example: Wally, who used to love dogs to the point where he would feed all the strays on the streets, finds himself uncomfortable and upset near one as it reminded him of his time as Boris. There was at least one panic attack by at least one of them a day, and the person or people who were closest to them were fetched to calm them down. At least one person cried everyday and it was absolutely heartbreaking for everyone to see their friends in such a state. Not to mention everyone was highly uncomfortable around Joey, not trusting him with a single thing in the house.

However, it was worth noting that everyone was helping one another get through their fears and their new daily life. Everyone went out of their way to comfort one another and check up on everyone periodically; no one feeling right with leaving everyone to their own devices once more than one had been expressing wishes to 'die peacefully this time'. Sometimes one would slip back into their old tics: Sammy would get intrusive thoughts on his 'Lord and Savior', Wally would forget a lot ranging from certain people to who he was or would go mute for hours to even days on end, Norman would stalk around the house mindlessly, not showing any reaction to a sound the others produced and attacking anything that moved, Susie and Allison would fight bitterly on topics, screaming over the other to be heard, Grant would put random objects in his mouth and chew them if he was bored or he'd go completely mute, along with many others, but it was the people they recognized and loved most breaking them out of these dangerous headspaces.

Maybe things weren't looking up right now and maybe things seemed gloomy and dark, but... if they stuck together and continued to help one another out when they needed it, maybe things would turn out alright in the end. It was a silly notion; a mere flimsy hope, but it was all it took for the others to latch onto the idea and not let go. It was the hope that it would be alright in the end, after all, that gave them the motivation to keep going after everything they've been through. 

.

.

.

And you can bet that they'll never let that hope die.

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed this work, please go check out my Quotev account under the same username. There's many more fanfictions and original works there (albeit some I'm really not proud of like my Creepypasta ones and my original FNaF one).


End file.
